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A disaster narrowly avoided, a danger only spotted by chance - yet the company involved faces no prosecution. Channel 4 News tells the untold story of Sizewell A, one Britain's older nuclear power plants. These are details that, but for a Freedom of Information request, would have remained secret. Two years ago, a burst pipe inside the Sizewell A station led to a huge leak from the pond used to cool thousands of nuclear fuel rods. Sizewell lies in Suffolk, on the East coast of England. If the nuclear fuel rods had caught fire, the resulting radioactive plume could have landed on villages from Southwold and Dunwich in the North, to Thorpeness and Aldburgh in the South, and inland to Leiston and Saxmundum.

"MAINS water supplies in east Suffolk could be put under stress if permission is given to build a £6billion Sizewell C nuclear power station, according to critics. Figures revealed to a local watchdog group show that the existing Sizewell B plant uses about 800 cubic metres of mains water a day - estimated to be about 7% of the total demand in the local catchment area. Critics say based on this figure a twin-reactor Sizewell C would demand a further 1,600 cubic metres a day - in one of the driest parts of the country and where householders and businesses have in the past few decades faced restrictions on use."

DECOMMISSIONING of the last of the radioactive material from Sizewell A has been put back 75 years, with energy bosses saying it isn't their number one priority. The removal of all hazardous waste from the twin reactor nuclear plant had been recommended to be fast-tracked to only take 25-30 years, but those plans have now been thrown out. Nuclear radioactive waste will now stay on the Suffolk coast at the Sizewell A site until 2110 after the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) committed its resources to Sellafield and Dounreay. But last night the organisation insisted the situation was not motivated by financial constraints. Anti-nuclear campaigners are up in arms over what they claim to be a 'U-turn', saying it will leave Suffolk open to potential terrorist attacks for years to come.

A COMMUNITY watchdog group is calling for more information about a German study which suggests that there are clusters of childhood leukaemia cases near nuclear power station sites. The Sizewell Stakeholder Group - set up to improve liaison between the nuclear site, the local community and regulators - wants to know if there is any UK implication. The new study, commissioned by the German Federal office for Radiological Protection, looked at childhood cancers in the vicinity of the country's nuclear power plants.

The wind charges in from the North Sea, shakes the hedgerows, jostles the cow parsley and the bright yellow gorse. Above us, the fizz and drone of electricity cables that score the morning's pale blue sky. Ahead stands Sizewell nuclear power station, its huge white dome and buff-coloured concrete block dominating the horizon.

"HIGHLY radioactive spent fuel from the Sizewell B nuclear power station could be stored in containers in a massive new building on the site. British Energy, part of EDF energy, has outlined plans to build a dry storage building to manage the power station's spent fuel from 2015. The company has submitted an application to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) for permission to build the facility near Sizewell B on the north Suffolk coast. At the moment, spent fuel is kept in a fuel storage pond, which is expected to provide capacity until about 2015. If the application for the new dry fuel store is permitted, it will be built on the existing site and store spent fuel from 2015."

"You can take the girl out of Suffolk but you can't take Suffolk out of the girl. Stories inspired by her home county have been floating around former Look East broadcaster Boni Sones's head for years. Now she's sharing them. She spoke to Steven Russell BONI Sones was eight when the bulldozers and cranes came. They changed forever the face of the coast and heathland where she played, scraping away more than 200 acres of scrub and grass to build a nuclear power station. Not that it put paid to youthful pursuits, for the construction site became an unofficial adventure zone for children from the tiny fishing hamlet of Sizewell and the scattered houses around. "As kids, we used to break into the site by burrowing under the fence and climbing the crane and so on. It was just an extension of our playground," she confesses of the early 1960s. Not surprisingly, the magnox reactors had a major impact on the lives of the communities in and around Leiston. "The power station definitely gave a sense of menace," says Boni. "If you think, as eight-year-olds, we were having to practise emergency evacuation procedures . . . It went from being an idyllic childhood to something that had menace in it. I used to think 'Where would we be safe, then, if it blew up?'""

"A fire at the nuclear power station Sizewell B on the Suffolk coast was made safe by firefighters after six-and-a-half hours. The fire broke out just before 2100 BST in the building housing a charcoal absorber which is used to filter out gases. It was brought under control by 0330 BST after the charcoal absorber was flooded. Eight fire crews attended the blaze at the power station near Leiston."

A nuclear leak, which could have caused a major disaster, was only averted by a chance decision to wash some dirty clothes, according to a newly obtained official report. On the morning of Sunday 7 January 2007, one of the contractors working on decommissioning the Sizewell A nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast was in the laundry room when he noticed cooling water leaking on to the floor from the pond that holds the reactor's highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.

The UK nuclear regulator has defended its decision not to prosecute licensee Magnox Electric for a 2007 leak in a water storage tank at the UK's shut down Sizewell A nuclear power station. Had the leak continued to go unnoticed, some spent fuel might have been exposed to the air, risking a potential release of radioactivity. But the regulator argued that even then the fuel would have been sufficiently cooled. It also contends that its regulatory method, a 'direction' was appropriate, and fixed the problem without having to go through the lengthy legal process required in a prosecution. In addition, it has published a formerly classified briefing paper from January 2009 that gives a detailed overview of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate's structure and resources. The paper was released after a freedom of information act application.

"A fire inside a nuclear power station took firefighters seven hours to extinguish yesterday. Emergency plans were put into effect as more than 45 firemen tackled the blaze at the Sizewell B station near Leiston, Suffolk. The blaze in a building which is used to control fuel started at 8.45pm on Friday and was not fully extinguished until 3.40am yesterday. Crews wearing breathing equipment entered a charcoal absorber used to filter gas and flooded it with water to cool the surrounding area."

"PROBLEMS at the Sizewell B nuclear power plant could see the reactor remain closed until September - potentially costing tens of millions of pounds in lost electricity sales. Sizewell's owner EDF Energy has confirmed that the facility is not expected to be up and running until the third quarter of 2010. It means the power station, which has been shut since the end of March and employs more than 500 people, could be closed until September while engineers carry out repairs. Commentators suggest the power station could lose around £350,000 a day in electricity sales. Working on the basis that it will remain shut until September - about 180 days - it could see losses in the region of £63m. "

THE government should halt all plans to build more nuclear power stations with immediate effect after it was revealed that Suffolk was just hours away from a nuclear accident, campaigners claimed last night. About 10,000 gallons of radioactively contaminated water was discharged into the North Sea in January 2007 after a pipe, carrying cooling water to an engineered pond containing highly radioactive spent fuel rods, burst at Sizewell A power station on the Suffolk coast. Now an independent consultant's report has said that the power station was about ten hours away from a serious accident which could have drained the cooling pond, uncovered the old fuel and started a fire which would have released highly radioactive products.

More than 40,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked into the open when a 15ft crack appeared in a pipe leading to a cooling pond in the Sizewell A reactor in January 2007. If the worker had not spotted it, the pool, which contained 5,000 spent uranium fuel rods, could have run dry, causing the rods to ignite which would have sparked a supercharged radioactive fire, it was claimed.

IN Jonathan Leake's article ("Britain 'must go nuclear' to control climate", News, last week) Professor David MacKay cites Sizewell B as a model to follow. But it took 13 years to build and cost taxpayers the equivalent of £4 billion. Hardly a glowing reference. What's more, if the nuclear industry's track record is anything to go by, MacKay is whistling in the wind if he thinks it is possible to build the number of reactors he suggests in time to do anything to save the climate. The government of Ontario was recently quoted almost £14 billion for two reactors.

IN Jonathan Leake's article ("Britain 'must go nuclear' to control climate", News, last week) Professor David MacKay cites Sizewell B as a model to follow. But it took 13 years to build and cost taxpayers the equivalent of £4 billion. Hardly a glowing reference. What's more, if the nuclear industry's track record is anything to go by, MacKay is whistling in the wind if he thinks it is possible to build the number of reactors he suggests in time to do anything to save the climate. The government of Ontario was recently quoted almost £14 billion for two reactors.

Centrica (CNA.L) is not interested in taking a larger stake in four new nuclear plants to be built by France's EDF (EDF.PA), The Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday citing sources. EDF, which already owns eight nuclear power stations in the UK after its acquisition of British Energy last year, confirmed over the weekend that it may sell a 20 percent stake worth at least 3 billion pounds ($4.78 billion) in two reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset and two at Sizewell in Suffolk, the Telegraph reported. Centrica, which bought 20 percent of British Energy for 2.3 billion pounds earlier this year, has the right to take up a 20 percent stake in the new nuclear projects, but is understood not to want a bigger share, the paper said.

Centrica (CNA.L) is not interested in taking a larger stake in four new nuclear plants to be built by France's EDF (EDF.PA), The Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday citing sources. EDF, which already owns eight nuclear power stations in the UK after its acquisition of British Energy last year, confirmed over the weekend that it may sell a 20 percent stake worth at least 3 billion pounds ($4.78 billion) in two reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset and two at Sizewell in Suffolk, the Telegraph reported. Centrica, which bought 20 percent of British Energy for 2.3 billion pounds earlier this year, has the right to take up a 20 percent stake in the new nuclear projects, but is understood not to want a bigger share, the paper said.

These images are from the Sizewell protest in the UK from April 26th 2011

Government will ease the way for extra plants but not provide subsidies, energy minister Charles Hendry to tell industry chiefs Energy minister Charles Hendry will today set out the government's support for new nuclear power, in the face of opposition from the Tories' coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. Hendry will tell the Nuclear Industry Forum that there is a role for new nuclear plants, provided they do not require public subsidies."

ENVIRONMENT Agency bosses have decided not to prosecute the operator of Sizewell A over an incident which saw thousands of gallons of water contaminated when radioactivity escaped into the North Sea. The incident, in January 2007, involved the fracture of a plastic pipe in a cooling pond building where highly radioactive spent fuel rods are stored under water prior to their despatch to the Sellafield reprocessing works in Cumbria.

Government accused of driving through energy policy by using slanted study A public consultation on new nuclear power stations which was run by a company linked to the Prime Minister's personal pollster has been criticised for breaching industry guidelines. Environmentalists and opposition MPs denounced the exercise as "fixed" after the Market Research Standards Board said some material given to focus groups was "inaccurately or misleadingly presented".